What the sad tale of Newcastle-born Louis Laing tells about the decline of the England team - and what can be done to try and reverse thngs

Five years ago, Steve Bruce took a phone call while he was getting his feet under the table at the Stadium of Light.

It was another call congratulating him about the opportunity that he had just inherited but it included a kernel of advice for him from someone with deep knowledge of the North East football scene. “Watch out for a kid in your Academy,” the would-be sage warned. “His name is Louis Laing.”

On the day that England all-but tumbled out of the World Cup bemoaning the lack of quality centre-backs emerging from the Premier League’s richly-appointed Academies, Newcastle-born Laing – now 21 and with a single Premier League appearance on his CV – was on the move.

He secured a two-year deal at Nottingham Forest on Thursday afternoon, the calibre of the club prepared to take a risk on such a lightly-utilised player surely confirmation of his rich promise. It is also one little example of the wider problem that played out under the slate grey skies in Sao Paolo.

Trace Laing’s story back to its origins and it becomes a microcrosm of some of the problems that have infested the game in this country. First there is the failing of Newcastle’s Academy to spot Laing – a Montagu Boys Club member, born in Lemington – at an age to integrate him into their set-up.

“He lives in Lemington,” John Carver said two years. “For me, irrespective of what people think, that’s not right. If there is a talent out there within a stone’s throw of this city, then why is he not at Newcastle United?”

United’s Academy is troublesome. It took almost two years for them to confirm Category One status – for reasons that were never explained by the authorities. The club insisted it was procedural, a matter of floodlights and auxiliary matters. Others talked of the need to define their coaching philosophy.

Either way, it was unsatisfactory for a club of United’s size and importance to the region to be lagging so far behind when Championship clubs passed the first round of inspections with flying colours.

When Laing did break through, under Bruce at the fag end of a 2010 season that ended with a low-key defeat to Wolves at the Stadium of Light, he was unable to train on. injuries, undoubtedly, played their part. But he also encountered a problem that is by no means limited to the Stadium of Light – a lack of opportunity at Sunderland.

Four managers came and went. Each had different philosophies, each preferred senior defenders of varying ability and talent. The cut-and-thrust, high stakes nature of the Premier League made it impossible for them to blood a player like Laing.

Throw into the mix problems with coaching and doubts about his own ability and we arrive at another sad story of arrested development. England’s defeat on Thursday was down to more matter-of-fact factors like poor decision-making, team selection that was based around accommodating waning senior talents and simple rank defending. But it would be remiss to ignore the bigger factors that have been encroaching on England’s progress for years.

When accidents happen, investigators use a theory called Casual Analysis to determine why it happened and how they can put it right.

Break it down and Casual Analysis is a way of knitting together all the different factors that became interwoven and resulted in the big bang. It was developed as a way of acknowledging that there is rarely one ‘smoking gun’ when something goes wrong – it is usually several different problems that have been allowed to exist unchecked suddenly coming together with catastrophic results.

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Watching England head out of the World Cup was perhaps the jolt but in truth, this is death by a thousand cuts. We can chuck money at the problem in the shape of recruiting the best foreign coaches or assemble a grand FA blueprint on the back of discussions with talking heads but the fact is there are so many little things that need to be fixed.

Perhaps the FA could begin by addressing the problem region-by-region. Rather than inviting people to write to them with the their concerns – as they did with the FA commission – a regional trouble shooter could be appointed by the national body and dispatched to the region to work out why the production line has backed up.

Of course there are problems with the Premier League but in the North East there are a unique set of circumstances that need to be identified and solved.

We could start with the demise of the Boys Clubs and the red tape and financial constraints that are hampering them. Junior leagues in the area have been hit by teams pulling out. The number of public pitches has decreased.

Then we could move on to the elephant in the room: Newcastle United. An organisation that should be a focus and beacon of hope for football in the region has become a lightening conductor for frustration, anxiety and apathy.

The Premier League has allowed owners like Mike Ashley to grab regional assets and transform them into their plaything. Let us not pretend that Ashley cares a jot about the North East or the club’s position within the community. He has turned the club into a shell of its former self: an organisation where self-preservation, rather than excellence, is the priority for those employed in key positions.

It is a crying shame that the owner of Newcastle has such scant regard for the city that lives and breathes his football club but he cannot be blamed. The Premier League has created the situation that allows owners to nab clubs like Manchester United, the Magpies and Blackburn by owners who have no interest in such matters: why should Ashley act any differently from anyone else?

The region’s relationship with the England team remains an extremely uneasy one. For all the sniffy talk of Newcastle going French and Sunderland’s supposed lurch towards the foreign market last summer, the lack of interest from successive national managers is a festering source of discontent.

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